Bone Dry

I drive palm springs desert side roads
windmill turbines slapping moisture
against the end of time…

I can smell the water
seeping out of your eyes,
like a before the rain-dance injun
feeling the ground

sometimes tears well up
in your eyes so bad
they come out of mine,
like thunder cloud longing

I can’t see who you’ve been or where I was…

but then I remember…

out there along the 111,
out past everything,
where we used to go…

I remember…

down further south

I remember you before you were born…

hidden inside a bag of bones
under a pile of so many others
by your tiny mother
so many years ago

out there…

outside the phantasm of the past
and the minutiae of childhoods lost
and forgotten
time travel rubbed out and broken

a piece of bright cloth
woven and dyed
by the endless granny’s hand

fading forever
withering skin
killing the sun

out here…

with nothing,
but racing locomotives
and trained killers

I finally begin to understand.

the charred remains
the burnt shoreline
the death house stench

I understand your desert
and how it must begin again…

an old Kodak snapshot
of another bloody easter
a giant resurrection
postponed a hundred years

orphaned parents
and their dead kids
all gone now
as I approach the edge
of your dying sea

a desolation so clear
an aftermath of devastation

a calm that comes only from
the thirsty gullet blade of this earth
sated drunk, from so much blood

Mulch.

pieces of time and tumult
vacuums of decomposition

The shore is not a shore anymore
because it never was…

your sand is not sand
as I stand there now
and look down
to finally realize
that the grains so fine
from so far off
are in fact
the pulverized bones
of the millions dead

the final meditation
of countless lives

this grain pulver
your bone dust dead
a whirling sandstorm rising
sand blasting the skin
right off my own
making sure these wounds
never heal
Your bones are all mine,
and I’ve gone bone dry.

akm

Ara Mgrdichianisakm. He is a writer, photographer, and counselor who has worked with young people and their families, in and out of the scholastic environment, for more than 20 years. He is a Los Angeles native and matriculated at UCLA (BA) and PLNU (MA and PPS). He was a founding member, writer, and artist for Exile, a bi-lingual, bi-cultural, literary supplement published by Asbarez, and also worked as Assistant Editor for the Asbarez English Edition both before and after Armenian independence. Mgrdichian worked and lived in Armenia, with stints in the Nagorno Karabakh Republic from 1990 – 1993, as well as 2003 – 2004. You may see and hear more at akmi.tv and srcinfo.net, as well as akmimedia.com.

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2 Comments

This is a national pain which is deep down in our hearts.
One and half million souls are alive, they demand justice.
It will come. It is nearly there. The world’s eyes are open.
The time is a powerful healer.

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Earlier on Friday Asbarez shared a video on its Facebook page from the Artsakh Ombudsman’s Office (Human Rights Defender) in response to a video recently circulated on social media of Azerbaijani pre-school children voicing their hatred toward Armenians

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Earlier on Friday Asbarez shared a video on its Facebook page from the Artsakh Ombudsman’s Office (Human Rights Defender) in response to a video recently circulated on social media of Azerbaijani pre-school children voicing their hatred toward Armenians